Kids get Plumb nosy

The Plumb Farm that 75-year-old Annie Glenn remembers was surrounded by undeveloped land and a little dirt road that led to Greeley.

Today, traffic whizzes by on West 10th Street — which used to be that country road — and the Plumb farmhouse is surrounded by modern buildings such as Wal-Mart, a Chili’s restaurant and the post office.

But some things haven’t changed on Plumb Farm, like the arrival of baby birds and animals in spring.

Children ran their fingers through chick down and colt fuzz Monday, when Plumb Farm started its annual Baby Animal Days.

Baby Animal Days is mostly about feeling nubs that will someday become horns and helping mothers such as pygmy goats, sheep, cats, bunnies and sheep cuddle their babies.

“I’m playing with the kittens and holding them,” 8-year-old Paige Murray of Greeley said.

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Baby animals supply fuzzies for Paige. But in Glenn’s day, they meant a lot of work.

Glenn was one of six Plumb sisters who helped run the family farm that was settled by Glenn’s great-grandfather, Charles White in 1871.

Chicks and lambs arrived each spring at Plumb Farm.

“The new chicks came in the mail, 100 at a time,” Glenn said of the cardboard boxes with air holes poked in them. “Mother used to say, ‘Give them a drink of water before you put them in the brooder.’ “

The old kerosene-heated brooder is now gathering dust in the root cellar.

When Glenn was a little girl, the brooder was the source of many sleepless nights for her mother, who woke many times in the middle of the night to check the temperature and make sure the flame hadn’t gone out.

Mrs. Plumb always did a good job of tending to the chicks: Glenn can’t remember losing any but she recalls plenty of fresh eggs and fried chicken.

The numbers of chicks that lived in the kerosene brooder were rivaled in number by lambs.

The Plumb girls had a lot of work on their hands feeding and watering the sheep and their babies.

One year, they had even more responsibility.

Glenn’s father developed a problem in one of his shoulders, which meant Glenn and her little sister Agnes were responsible for birthing the lambs.

If a mother sheep had trouble with a breech lamb during labor, the girls had to “reach in there and see if we could get it straightened out.”

But despite all the work, the wonder of farm life was often as fun for Glenn as it seemed to be for Monday’s visiting youngsters as they peered into the chicken brooder and sheep pen.